Interacting with the ordinary people: How populist messages and styles communicated by politicians trigger users’ behaviour on social media in a comparative context

Abstract

Populist politicians’ social media activity has often been associated with their electoral success. Yet, research on the driving forces of engagement on social media is scarce. Are populist politicians triggering more interaction than mainstream politicians, or is it rather the populist ideology they convey? To disentangle these different factors, we conducted a comparative content analysis of Twitter and Facebook communication of 13 leading candidates in Austria and the Netherlands during an election campaign. Findings show that it is rather styles conductive to populism (i.e. emotionality, first-person references) than the actual content of populist communication that trigger online behaviour. Importantly, irrespective of the content they convey, right-wing populist politicians are more successful in spreading their message via social media than mainstream politicians. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the role of online communication for populist politicians’ success in spreading their viewpoints across networked societies.